The Rich Are Differently Moral

Suppose you’re standing on a footbridge over train tracks. On one side you see a trolley approaching, and on the other you see five railroad workers. Next to you is an overweight stranger. The trolley is out of control, and the workers can’t hear you yelling. The only way to save their lives is to push the fat man off the footbridge into the path of the trolley, killing him. Would you do it?

It seems you’d have to be pretty cold-hearted to shove someone off a bridge into the path of a train. But from another perspective, that is the most beneficial thing you could do, saving the most lives. Empathy, an important ingredient in morality, helps prevent us from assaulting others, which is normally a good thing. But maybe it’s sometimes a bad thing. New research shows that upper-class people have less empathy than lower-class people, but that sometimes this can lead them to do the most good for the most people when their bleeding-heart compatriots won’t.

About a year ago, Piff, Côté, and three collaborators published a paper in PNAS showing, basically, that rich people are jerks. Its title was “Higher Social Class Predicts Increased Unethical Behavior.” One test found that drivers of nice cars are more likely to cut people off in traffic. Other work has shown that upper-class people are less compassionate than lower-class people, for instance toward children suffering from cancer. It’s also been shown that lack of empathy makes people more utilitarian—more likely to focus on the consequence of an act, even if the act breaks certain rules. Psychopaths are more willing to push the fat man in front of the trolley. So Côté et al. figured social class might influence utilitarianism.

In the first of three studies reported in the new paper, participants answered several questions online about money worries and about their wealth growing up, for a measure of social class. Then they read the footbridge dilemma. The higher their class, the more likely they were to say pushing is okay (Even controlling for age, gender, ethnicity, religiosity, and political orientation.)

In the second study, participants were told they were playing a game with four other people online, and that they’d randomly been assigned the role of “decider.” Further, they were told that each of the five participants would receive $5, but the decider could take money from one of the other players. Each dollar taken would be multiplied by two and distributed to each of the other three players (but not the decider). So one dollar becomes six. Subjects reported their household income, how much compassion and sympathy they felt for the player who would have money taken from him, and how much money they were going to take. Income was correlated with dollars taken, and this pattern was partially accounted for by reduced empathy. The wealthier the subject, the less he cared about the victim and the more willing he was to steal from him for the group’s overall benefit.

The third study was like the second, but some subjects were asked to write about the feelings of the victim before taking his money. This time, among those who wrote about the victim, there was no class difference in dollars taken. Thinking about the victim’s feelings increased the empathy of upper-class participants to match that of the others.

The researchers suggest wealth and status reduce empathy because money allows one to be independent, rather than relying on others in one’s community for resources and survival (and returning the favor). Instead of borrowing a cup of milk from a neighbor, they send their animatronic butler out to milk their solid gold cow, etc.

“Ironically,” the authors write, “reduced empathic responding leads upper-class individuals to tend to more readily make decisions that maximize the greatest good for the greatest number.” Which is great and good. As long as you endorse utilitarianism (or are a hapless railroad worker). Some would see the stranger-pushing and scream bloody murder.

And even if you’re a utilitarian, you might not want a Richie Richerson in charge of certain ethical decisions. What if the choice isn’t between an identifiable victim with feelings (the fat guy) and a greater good (the five lives) but between a victim and personal advancement? Piff’s earlier work suggests Richie might act in a way that neither a utilitarian nor a non-utilitarian would support, benefiting himself at the expense of others.

There’s also a paper in press reporting that when people become less squeamish about personal harm to others—here the subjects took the anti-anxiety drug lorazepam, but the conclusions could be extended to psychopaths or the rich—they’re more okay with, say, smothering a crying baby to save a family hiding from enemy soldiers, but they’re also more okay with, say, killing a baby because you don’t feel like taking care of it. “We conclude that lorazepam makes people more ruthless in general,” the authors write, “rather than boosting utilitarianism specifically.”

It’s worth noting, as The Atlanticdoes in their current issue, that the lowest-earning 20% of Americans donated 3.2 percent of their income to charity in 2011, while the highest-earning 20% donated only 1.3 percent. And of the 50 largest charitable gifts in 2012, none went to organizations focused on social service or poverty. The big winners: elite universities and museums. Because, really, holding a charity gala in your honor at a soup kitchen is just so… déclassé.

But if you can get a billionaire to open his wallet, and if there’s no temptation to stick his name on something, he will likely give his money very wisely. Just ask Bill “malaria-B-gone” Gates.

To me, this looks like a one sided take with a lot of cherry picking. For one thing, the report by Piff that you cite has come under heavy fire because of methodological shortcomings. Here is a nice introduction into the subject:

To put it short, Piff et al seem to have made more comparisons between the rich and the poor, but have published only those that look unflattering for the rich. And you have to put your theory into the perspective of common knowledge. And there is an elephant in the room: Crime Statistics. It is sociology basics that most (violent) crimes are commited by the lower classes, which is also reflected in the demographics of the prison population.

For a far more balanced review on the subject look at this review on the subject (pdf):

It shows, among other things, that “However, when the situation involves strong cues for altruism, such as cries for help, the powerful are more likely to intervene in an emergency.”
In the end, it is not very fertile to inspect certain segments of society and look if they are less honest than others. Where to stop? The "rich" may be the only minoroty that you may love to bash and not be criticised for.

You write, "For a far more balanced review on the subject look at this review," but the article you cite is about the role of social power, alcohol, and anonymity in inhibition, will-power, and self-consciousness, not the role of wealth in empathy. Surely these factors are all related in some way, but the picture is obviously not simple. You write: "it is not very fertile to inspect certain segments of society and look if they are less honest than others. Where to stop?" By this logic, we should not bother inspecting social factors that correlate with particular behaviors because one could alternatively inspect other social factors that also correlate with those behaviors. Is that what you mean to say?

As for criminal behavior, many factors beyond wealth and empathy come into play there.

And from what I understand, the earlier Piff paper has come under scrutiny but has survived it.

In the advent of the Piff study (of which the destiny is not clear, look at the Gregory Francis Page) there has been a whole new series of studies looking for the correlation between wealth and altruistic behavior. And the results do not suit the trend. For example this one:

to sum it up: Less altruistic behavior in poorer locations. And there are some more, I could look it up if you like. And as to donations, (the poor giving more), there is a twist to it, look it up:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/opinion/21kristof.html

As Arthur Brooks shows in his book "Who really cares", conservative US households give 30 percent more donations, although they earn 6 percent LESS than liberal households. So who are the rich? Anyway, Matthew, I do not want to fight you to much. I LOVED your books on the laws of magical thinking. I even recommended it to a big German comedian who is preparing a show on magic.

I just found an excellent new research review on the subject that is "in print" and that clearly refutes the "Piff-Equation" (Rich are Bad) (By the way, I wonder what Piff and Keltner earn).

Social Class and (Un)ethical Behavior
To appear in: Perspectives on Psychological Science

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/rzeckhau/statusethics.pdf

"We argue that the relationship between class and ethical behavior is far from a simple pattern; it is a complex mosaic." Any by the way, do you really want to know why I find it not very fertile to inspect certain segments of society and look if they are less honest than others? What if you found that blacks, muslims, homosexuals, jews.... are more dishonest than the rest of us? Would you also proclaim these news here?

As the lost-letter study shows, the connection between income and morality is not simple. Those authors write that in their study it's "impossible to assert which factor, poverty or crime, actually predicts altruistic behavior." And the authors of the Perspectives paper you cite write, "Ethical behavior proves to be affected by (i) moral values, (ii) social orientation, and (iii) the costs and benefits of taking various actions. Strong class differences emerge in each of these areas, leading to differences in behavior."

I do not claim to have all the answers. Here I was merely trying to highlight one factor: empathy for victims. (Perhaps mentioning the Atlantic article was a distraction in this post.)

"What if you found that blacks, muslims, homosexuals, jews.... are more dishonest than the rest of us? Would you also proclaim these news here?" I would tread carefully, but If it were a well-controlled study that shed light on human behavior I would at least consider it. I would base my decision more on scientific validity that on political correctness. By the way, I forgot to mention when I originally published this post that in the first study the authors controlled for age, gender, ethnicity, religiosity, and political orientation. Surely there was more they could have controlled for, but that's a good start in my opinion.

When I first read the Piff paper, I thought: Oh my God, they want to find out who is more prosocial (the rich or the poor), but they made only a few comparisons. I could easily think up other comparisons that would let the rich look better. (And they may have made more comparisons and cherry picked those that suited them, as Gregory Francis thinks). I once wrote a review on the question if atheists are as prosocial as beliefers, and I knew I could not exemplify this with only a few comparisons. There had to be a whole panopticum of comparisons that would be representative for the moral field, which is multi facetted. As I did, there came the "no difference" trend.

But proving "the rich are jerks" line with only a few comparisons looks to me like a cheap shot at a soft target that will not bite back - as the rich are not a "sacred" minority like homosexuals, muslims, jews, blacks that you would never dare to tell off the same way. And, by the way, many rich are liberals who see their likes as Piff sees them. And indeed, the authors of the Perspectives paper I cite write, "Ethical behavior proves to be affected by (i) moral values, (ii) social orientation, and (iii) the costs and benefits of taking various actions. Strong class differences emerge in each of these areas, leading to differences in behavior." Yes, yes, but these class differences are some times in favor of the rich, other times in favor of the poor, and often in between. So the best data now seem to show that there is no major diiference in prosocial behavior between the classes. The devil is in the detail.

Well the saving the most lives actually isn't agreeable to everyone. How do we know the workers lives are worth more than the fat mans life? Maybe the fat man is working on the cure for cancer and now you just killed him.Maybe one of the workers is a child molester and you just saved him. We shouldn't assume more lives saved is always better.

But Matthew, the science arguments for paternalism, such as yours, fall apart when confronted with actual people. Bloomberg's "soda ban" is a great example. Thinking it in people's best interest to limit soda consumption because HE thinks it is, he enacted legislation. The people were vastly against his ban, and it was overturned by the courts prior to it going into effect.

The problem with paternalism is that it butts up against free will. Now, if you are a determinist, then you should have no problem with paternalism. But if you believe in free will and the freedom for people to do what they want to, then paternalism is the bigger problem than that which a billionaire is trying to fix. No one wants someone who thinks they are better than they are to tell them how to or not to live. And Bloomberg is the quintessential example of this idea.

This will be the ultimate argument for the forseeable future. Progressive Paternalism versus Libertarian Free Will. This may be a science versus philosophy argument, but philosophy will always win. Always err on the side of freedom.

I wouldn't say the arguments for paternalism "fall apart." A thorough utilitarian would factor in people's negative reactions to feeling constrained, as well as the reduction of soda-drinking pleasure they would receive. If those outweigh the health benefits, he or she would side against enacting a paternalistic measure. So paternalism can sometimes be defended for utilitarian reasons, and it can sometimes be rejected for them.

I get irritated with dumb questions that are used to "prove" something. Note, for example, that in the ridiculous opening question, it is pretended that the only way you can save the life of the workers is to push the fat man, (and why is he fat? To make it less objectionable to push him? Why not make him a billionaire?) when clearly in that case the person could *also* jump in front of the trolly, and sacrifice SELF instead of murdering someone else. And why would anyone assume that shoving someone in front of a trolly would necessarily stop it? Or that the workers are truly oblivious instead of expertly gauging the whereabouts of the train? The entire set up is foolish, but people keep pretending that it somehow "proves" something. All it proves is that people who write allegedly ethical questions are often foolish.

Then again, maybe it shows that people who pretend to be "progressive" like to contrive foolishness in order to give themselves a chance to be "heroic" without having to put their own skin in the game.

The article is definitely one sided and hell bent on rich bashing. Having worked for law enforcement for twenty years my own experience is that people from lower socioeconomic class and even the successful people like doctors,engineers etc who come from poor parents have less empathy,are not trustworthy and tend to have complexes.This type of people often harbour antipathy towards rich and sympathy for poor.I know it would be highly rude and impolite but the investigation demands that a probe in early life conditions of the author would be interesting.

Maybe if your job wasn't to pathologize and criminalize the survival mechanisms of the people who are being scammed by their employers and their government and to focus on the REAL criminals whose cons are technically "legal" because they bought the "right" to con people, you would have a different opinion.

We hold the poor, starving, and desperate to unreasonably high standards while we let the rich elite screw us in every way they possibly can. Classist trash.

Honestly, the use of a fat man in and of itself is pretty gross, why does the man have to be fat? Are you implying the fat guy has less value because he's fat? What if that fat guy has the cure for cancer in that brain of his and this ahole went and pushed him in front of the train because he assumed fat people are useless? The entire premise of this article is trash, but then psychology today isn't really a reputable source of psychological discussion in the first place so what do you expect? It's like they're let anyone publish any garbage.

Hi Jess. The "footbridge problem" is a classic one in moral philosophy and psychology. One would push a fat man because only he would be large enough to stop the trolley. The problem is only meant to represent the abstract dilemma of actively hurting another person in order to help more than one other person, a dilemma that occurs in many forms in daily life.